26 replies to this topic

[joemailey]

Posted to soon.... On my phone see below post

[Trollercoaster]

The thing that seems to drain battery life the most is the screen. Seeing phones now with 5"+ screens that have better resolution/clarity than your desktop monitor sucks a lot of power. Certainly appears to be the main culprit on my android phone. Things like the CPUs are more efficient as in a lot of phones they throttle back to a fraction of their full power unless it's needed.

It's a far cry from my old "dumb" phone which would last a week with not much difficulty but it was just a phone and messaging...it didn't have a massive OS, apps, internet, huge screen and dual core processor in it.

[joemailey]

intrinsica - I know your agreeing with me in one part. But I'm not comparing battery life with old phones. Just pointing out the difference & wondering why manufactures decided a long battery life was no longer important over looks & thinness when it came to moving on to smart phones.

They made phones better and improved them greatly and neglected battery life/sacrificed it in the process for looks. It's mainly an observation and a question as why they decided to improve phones and just forget about battery life. It's not a question of why the hell they don't last as long. I know that answer, everyone knows that answer, but they could last a lot longer than they currently do at the minute and still look great. I should be able to mention old phones, with out the old ones smartphones wouldn't be here. They evolved into smart phones and a core feature got neglected at the cost of looks and anything You can do, I can do better kinda competitions just to one up each other.

[SHoTTa35]

Basically he's saying that if you want your new phone with 10x power requirements to have the same battery life then you'll need a battery with probably 10x the capacity - not 2-3x like they do now.

Some old Nokia vs Samsung Galaxy S3.

1.8-2.8" screen vs 4.7".
200mhz CPU vs 1.5Ghz
850mAh vs 2000mAh battery
Old OS vs New Hotness OS. (LOL)

I think everyone agrees with you already though, Phones being 7.7mm doesn't do me no good, i'd much rather them being 14mm (DOUBLE!) if that meant i could get a good 2-3 days usage from it. When you think of it too, 14mm is not even that thick, it's about the width of an average pinky finger.

So yeah, my phone now is 9.1mm (Nexus 4) and i saw some people bashing it saying it's so thick compared to the iPhone 5 (or even SGS3) because it's 1.7mm thicker!? I'm like WTF is wrong with people, 1.7mm is so small that it's not even something i'd think of when comparing 2 devices. Weight surely but not that small of a difference in thickness.

[tsupersonic]

I'd rather R&D go into battery technology - all it seems people do these days is make higher capacity batteries while the screen on smartphones gets bigger, and CPU/GPU's get far more powerful. Everyone is also worried about having the thinnest device, and that's just silly. Give me a functional phone with a 4.3-4.5" HD display, at least 2-3 days of battery (WITH heavy usage), 4G LTE in a 8-10 mm thin profile.

I think Motorola has done something really nice with the RAZR HD Maxx and RAZR Maxx, even though they are just high capacity batteries in a very thin profile.

[joemailey]

Basically he's saying that if you want your new phone with 10x power requirements to have the same battery life then you'll need a battery with probably 10x the capacity - not 2-3x like they do now.

Some old Nokia vs Samsung Galaxy S3.

1.8-2.8" screen vs 4.7".
200mhz CPU vs 1.5Ghz
850mAh vs 2000mAh battery
Old OS vs New Hotness OS. (LOL)

I think everyone agrees with you already though, Phones being 7.7mm doesn't do me no good, i'd much rather them being 14mm (DOUBLE!) if that meant i could get a good 2-3 days usage from it. When you think of it too, 14mm is not even that thick, it's about the width of an average pinky finger.

So yeah, my phone now is 9.1mm (Nexus 4) and i saw some people bashing it saying it's so thick compared to the iPhone 5 (or even SGS3) because it's 1.7mm thicker!? I'm like WTF is wrong with people, 1.7mm is so small that it's not even something i'd think of when comparing 2 devices. Weight surely but not that small of a difference in thickness.

I know what he's saying and I fully understand his point, but I never asked why my phone doesn't last as long as a 3330. Just referenced older phones as smart phones are based on those, that's where they started.

But they neglected battery life as we change generations and improved everything else and sacrificed battery life for looks. It was never about smartphones lasting the same length of time as basic phones. I was just trying to point out they could last longer if manufactures would make a better effort and remember what was great about the older generation. Somewhere along the lines someone decided smartphones lasting a day on average would do and no has tried to change it since.

It would be like laptops transforming to ultra books and ultra books only lasting half an hour on battery life because to make them thinner they cut the batteries in size. But that's ok because the screens better and there lighter and thinner and faster and prettier.

[Mikeffer]

My HTC 8X hasn't been charged for 40 hours and it's only just going in to the last 20% and that's with everything switched on and full bright screen. I'd say that's pretty except-able for everyday use.
If i was going somewhere were i thought i may not be able to get near a power supply for more than a couple of days then chances of me having my phone switched on all the time are slim and the chances of having WiFi, Bluetooth, auto-syncing turned on a re non-existent.

I totally understand where you're coming from, but i personally would rather have a nice slim, easy to hold and carry phone, than one that has a longer battery life and is a brick.

[joemailey]

My HTC 8X hasn't been charged for 40 hours and it's only just going in to the last 20% and that's with everything switched on and full bright screen. I'd say that's pretty except-able for everyday use.
If i was going somewhere were i thought i may not be able to get near a power supply for more than a couple of days then chances of me having my phone switched on all the time are slim and the chances of having WiFi, Bluetooth, auto-syncing turned on a re non-existent.

I totally understand where you're coming from, but i personally would rather have a nice slim, easy to hold and carry phone, than one that has a longer battery life and is a brick.

I'd be very happy if my phone lasted 40hrs between charges.

[Mikeffer]

I'd be very happy if my phone lasted 40hrs between charges.

I mean, obviously 8 of those hours i was asleep but the phone was still on, just not in actual use.

[Draconian Guppy]

So yeah, my phone now is 9.1mm (Nexus 4) and i saw some people bashing it saying it's so thick compared to the iPhone 5 (or even SGS3) because it's 1.7mm thicker!? I'm like WTF is wrong with people, 1.7mm is so small that it's not even something i'd think of when comparing 2 devices. Weight surely but not that small of a difference in thickness.

Probably the size of their brains or penis

[+Daedroth]

Too make smartphones have a long battery life, you would have to significantly increase the size of the device, or decrease the performance/hardware specifications. It's all fine and dandy comparing an iPhone/Galaxy S2 or whatever with other phones on the market with good battery life, but you would be failing to compare the hardware specification or dimension differences. You cannot have on without the other with the technology of today. I have recently bought a HTC Windows Phone 8S, which is my first smartphone. I'm impressed with it, however the battery life is fairly poor compared to my last phone, which was NOT a smartphone, which went well over a week without needing a charge. I'm slowly getting used to having to charge this phone every night, or every other night if I'm lucky...but I do understand that it is because of the power requirements of the hardware.

[SHoTTa35]

I know what he's saying and I fully understand his point, but I never asked why my phone doesn't last as long as a 3330. Just referenced older phones as smart phones are based on those, that's where they started.

But they neglected battery life as we change generations and improved everything else and sacrificed battery life for looks. It was never about smartphones lasting the same length of time as basic phones. I was just trying to point out they could last longer if manufactures would make a better effort and remember what was great about the older generation. Somewhere along the lines someone decided smartphones lasting a day on average would do and no has tried to change it since.

It would be like laptops transforming to ultra books and ultra books only lasting half an hour on battery life because to make them thinner they cut the batteries in size. But that's ok because the screens better and there lighter and thinner and faster and prettier.

As you pointed out (or someone else) battery tech just can't keep up with other tech so you can either have long ago CPUs with today's battery tech to get super long battery life or what we have currently. It's not as if they don't spend tons of money in R&D for batteries, hell before a 2,000mAh battery would be huge in the olden days, probably 2cm (20mm - or 400% larger than todays). Now that same capacity fits into the space of say 120% of the older 850mAH Nokia battery from years ago.

So we'll need some big break in that department or phones will just have to stop getting better (or get better in amazin ways - as in screens and CPUs using super low power) or we'll keep going in the rate we are going now.

In general i get all day usage from my phone - over the holidays had like 5-6hrs of voice calls in 1 day as well as 2hrs of screen time on the Nexus 4. The nexus 4 got 15hrs on a voice call as tested by GSMarena.com I don't expect to be doing gaming for 2hrs then music for 2hrs then 3hrs of phone calls on a phone during the day. When would a normal person during a normal day expect that much usage from a phone unless they just sit there playing with their phones all day.